Yet in spite of this perfectly obvious fact, there are people to-day asking, with all appearance of sincerity, what a woman of fifty or more can do!  Their confining work in the home, say these observers, is done.  A common suggestion is that they be utilized in politics.  This suggestion has its comical side.  A person who has nothing to do after fifty years of life in a business as many-sided and demanding as that of a woman, can hardly be expected to be worth much in a business as complicated and uncertain as politics, and for which she has had no training.  The notion that the woman’s business is ended at fifty or sixty is fantastic.  It only ends there if she has been blind to the meaning of her own experiences; if she has never gone below the surface of her task—­never seen in it anything but physical relations and duties; has sensed none of its intimate relations to the community, none of its obligations toward those who have left her, none of those toward the oncoming generations.  If it ends there, she has failed to realize, too, the tremendous importance to all those who belong in her circle or who touch it of what she makes of herself, of her personal achievement.

A woman of fifty or sixty who has succeeded, has come to a point of sound philosophy and serenity which is of the utmost value in the mental and spiritual development of the group to which she belongs.  Life at every one of its seven stages has its peculiar harrowing experiences; hope mingles with uncertainty in youth; fear and struggle characterize early manhood; disillusionment, the question whether it is worth while, fill the years from forty to fifty,—­but resolute grappling with each period brings one out almost inevitably into a fine serene certainty which cannot but have its effect on those who are younger.  Ripe old age, cheerful, useful, and understanding, is one of the finest influences in the world.  We hang Rembrandt’s or Whistler’s picture of his mother on our walls that we may feel its quieting hand, the sense of peace and achievement which the picture carries.  We have no better illustration of the meaning of old age.

Family and social groups should be a blend of all ages.  One of the present weaknesses of our society is that we herd each age together.  The young do not have enough of the stimulating intellectual influence of their elders.  The elders do not have enough of the vitalizing influence of the young.  We make up our dinner party according to age, with the result that we lose the full, fine blend of life.

The notion that a woman has no worthy place or occupation after she is fifty or sixty, and that she can be utilized in public affairs, could only be entertained by one who has no clear conception of either private or public affairs—­no vision of the infinite reaches of the one or the infinite complexities of the other.  Human society may be likened to two great circles, one revolving within the other.  In the inner